Many software applications require “connection strings” to communicate with various data sources. A connection string is a string that specifies information about a data source and the means of connecting to it. The string is typically passed in code to an underlying driver to initiate the connection. Although the data source is commonly a database, the data source could also be a different entity such as, for example, a spreadsheet or a text file.
Over time, a multitude of application programming interfaces (“APIs”) have been developed to allow for accessing data from a variety of data sources and that use different styles of connection strings. For modern software applications, this has created a challenge in maintaining and migrating these applications from using legacy APIs, such as OLE DB and ODBC, to using more modern native APIs, such as ADO.NET. For example, in many instances, the only process available for maintaining and/or migrating a software application to support various APIs is by manually revising the configuration and/or settings of the application.
Thus, a need in the industry exists for producing data source connection strings capable of supporting legacy and/or modern connection types without requiring editing and/or modifying existing connection strings in an application. It is with respect to this and other considerations that the disclosure herein is presented.